Random Thoughts on the Current Looting

The Democrat Party is the Looter Party. The Looters want to take over 15% of the economy in their quest for total control. Yes, as altruists, they believe dictating the lives of the collective is moral. Looters who loot for good of the collective are still Looters.

Frederic Bastiat called it “legalized plunder.” Plunder is plunder, legal or not.

50% of medical spending in America is done by the government. And guess what? The system is FUBAR. So the Looter Party’s solution is to make medical spending 100% government funded — and government controlled. This is like a man going to the doctor because he has cancer, and the doctor pulls out a gun and shoots the man. Hey, might as well go 100% and just finish him off.

The Looters thought they could pull a fast one on the American public, for whom they have great contempt. They thought they could fool the people with the “public option,” and nationalize health care before the rubes in the sticks figured out that it means the end of private insurance. They thought this because postmodern philosophy has destroyed any respect for or understanding of reason in them. The Looters think the American people have been hypnotized by the corporate oligarchy, and concluded they just have to fool the people with their own slick lies. The interesting thing about this: the left’s epistemology makes leftists stupid. The American people are much smarter than the Looters think they are. Reason is practical. The Looters are con artists who picked the wrong mark. You can’t cheat an honest man.

When the Looters nationalize health care the judgment of doctors will have to answer entirely to bureaucrats (the situation for doctors today is mixed, but already pretty bad). What doctor with any self-esteem would work like that? The best will refuse to be servile wretches who must evade independent thinking in order to comply with regulations. We’ll end up with doctors who are willing to endure servility — or worse, who like to be told what to do by bureaucratic thugs.

Do we want a country in which a 75-year old is told he can’t have a hip replacement because he is no longer of worth to the collective? Not only that, do we want a country in which that 75-year old is forbidden by law to buy a hip replacement with his own money on the market, and is thus forced to fly to Costa Rica to get the operation?

By what right do Barbara Boxer and Barney Frank and Henry Waxman tell an American he cannot buy a hip replacement surgery?

Will the people of America, the country of the Declaration of Independence, allow the Looters to take over total control of their lives? Will we bend over and take it quietly from our masters? Thank you, sir! May I have another? Somehow I don’t think so. Americans still do not make good victims.

Last year more people bought Atlas Shrugged than any previous year in the book’s 51-year history. This year is on a pace to break that record. More people than ever are being exposed to the ideas of Ayn Rand.

The Looters might get away with their robbery now, but it won’t last. The Looters have no idea what will hit them in the next few decades.

I don’t quite agree with the part about the collective and the 75 year old man. I think its an appeal to pity… that’s how they get a lot of left-leaners: completely ignore the coercion that pays for that surgery.

so long as I am forced to give my money to compensate an industry that systematically games a government program in the guise of relieving pain and suffering, I’d prefer there be actual standards to determine who gets a chunk of those scarce resources. Rather than the disaster we have now. So you’re 70+ year-old, chronic alcoholic presenting with end-stage renal failure? Sorry. You’ve slowly killed yourself. Now, you’re dying. Let’s face reality: your condition cannot be treated (save for a transplant), and otherwise trying to do so would be futile.

Moataz: If gramps with the sloshed liver wants to pay for his own medical care out of pocket (or pay for his own insurance etc you get the idea) I have no problem with that, and neither would a capitalistic society. Since it’s inherently wrong to expropriate wealth from anyone else to pay for services for that guy, it actually doesn’t matter if he’s sloshy or the picture of health.
The issue is one level further up the chain than you’re giving it credit for being; eliminate the prerequisite condition, and it becomes moot how healthy the guy is and whether he should have lived a healthier lifestyle.

Well, not entirely. Obviously, if Medicare doesn’t exist, the question is moot. (Except even private charities who pay for such things would likely establish some sort of evaluation method lest they run their finances into the ground.)

Right now we, in fact, do have Medicare. And it’s likely not going away tomorrow, next month, or next year. And costs keep going up-up-up. I’m merely saying why, and how to prevent it. If you have a thought on how to eliminate Medicare completely, do share. I’m all ears.

Moataz: That’s exactly it. Medicare is a redistributive social program that should not exist. The only way to uproot such entitlements is to bring about a vast change in the ideas that dominate American political discourse, toward ideas of reason and rational self-interest. Blogs like this one are literally where these ideas are developing.

The key is that we are arguing against Medicare (or any socialized medicine) for the right reasons, based on principle and not pragmatism. Most of the right-wing opposition you see to SM is based on it being too costly, issues such as when to terminate coverage for a person who lives unhealthily (as in your example), how to address rationing, etc. The problem with those pragmatic arguments is that they allow a base assumption that SM is the right thing to do in principle. They argue the “how” and assume the “why.” Here, we argue the “why” and say that SM is wrong no matter how effective it is and no matter how little it costs, because it is always wrong to violate individual rights by expropriating wealth from one individual to pay for services rendered to another individual. Once you argue from the principle, it no longer matters how practical it is or how well costs could be contained or whether the all-out SM the Democrats push is any better than the psedo-SM the Republicans push.

Approaching every argument from principle, from the abstract instead of the concretes, is the key to winning the war of ideas. It’s also a great aid to clarifying issues for oneself; it’s kind of like having the “Teacher’s Edition.” It’s amazing how many hot-button political struggles are reduced to irrelevancies.

National Security Workforce to Address ‘Intersectionality’: do you ever get the sense that you’re in a waking nightmare? Money quote from the memo: “Our greatest asset in protecting the homeland and advancing our interests abroad is the talent and diversity of our national security workforce.”

Last Week Tonight on Donald Trump: bit long, but great takedown of the Trump mythos. In a more rational political environment, this would have killed his presidential campaign. I’m not sure it’ll make any difference.

A Responsibility I Take Seriously: nominee must be “without any particular ideology or agenda” and have “a keen understanding that justice is not about abstract legal theory, nor some footnote in a dusty casebook.” I sure hope the Republicans can hold the line on his nominations.

Trigger Warnings in Annapolis: I’m not sure why I expected the service academies to be bastions of academic freedom, but I did. It’s much worse than the universities since they’re far more hierarchical.

Announcing the Twitter Trust & Safety Council: this is within their rights, of course. Given the leftist leanings of the company and its assembled Council of Goodspeech, I suspect that some groups will get a pass and some will face suppression. Chilling at any rate.